"The best career advice given to the young is, 'Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.'" -Katharine Whitehorn, journalist In addition to the awesome science that was presented at the two conferences I went to last weekend, which I talked about in my last blog post, both conferences featured speakers who offered us their perspectives on what to do after grad school.
Career advice in science often tends to boil down to one central question: Academia or Industry? Students are encouraged to choose either the "tenure track" and become professors at Universities, or the "industry route" by applying for jobs at businesses in pharmaceutical companies or the biotech industry. The unfortunate fact is that the two sides tend to denigrate each other - academics might think of going to industry as "selling out" or becoming a corporate drone, while industry workers tend to think of academia as out of touch and slow to change. At the HHMI Symposium we got the valuable opportunity to hear from someone who has done both. Dr. Morris Birnbaum was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for nearly 20 years before changing track and joining Pfizer as the chief scientific officer for cardiovascular and metabolic disease research. He presented a salient list of "myths" about industry he heard while he was an academic. Some rumors about industry, he says, are simply false (people are less engaged in science and work less collaboratively). Some myths are semi-truths (there are a lot of meetings, you get told what to work on). And finally, there were the myths that are just true (the goal of the company is to make money, and having an advisor or department head is not like having a boss). Dr. Birnbaum's talk encouraged us to think of industry not as the "evil" alternative to academic jobs (although I think this type of thinking is becoming less and less common), but to think of it as a choice that may or may not fit with your personality. He also encouraged both sides to try and reach a better understanding of the other, so that collaborations between academics and industry will go better. The theme of finding a fit for your individual personality was also discussed at the CSB retreat, where we had a fascinating panel of former MIT CSB grad students talk about their careers in the few years since they got their PhD. It was an uncommon opportunity to hear from people in between - after grad school, but before establishing a full career and reputation. The alumni panel had a great representation of different career paths. Albert Cheng is just starting up his lab at the Jackson Laboratory, after a post-doc at the other campus of the same organization. Alex Robertson works as a Software Engineer at Counsyl, a biotech company that does clinical genome sequencing, and Robin Friedman is the very first employee at a new start-up called VL34. For me, this panel showed the futility of the simple divide between academia and industry. The job that Dr. Birnbaum did as a professor at UPenn was very different from the one Dr. Cheng will do as head of an academic lab at a smaller institution not connected with a traditional university. And his job at the Pharma giant Pfizer would be unrecognizable to Dr. Robertson working at a biotech firm in Silicon Valley, and they are both a world away from Dr. Friedman's work with a nascent start-up company. Condensing all of this career information over the past week and a half has been an experience of further subdivision past "academia vs industry." I have gone from "leaning towards industry" to thinking about whether I would fit in better with a small start up or a huge pharmaceutical company, with more tech-minded businesses or bio-focused drug discovery ventures. Each of the alumni emphasized the importance of passion for what you do. Despite the very different environments where they work, they each seem to love their jobs, as they went the route that felt right to them. One piece of advice that I found particularly memorable was Robin's urging to take a post-doctoral position after grad school only for the "right reasons" - not to simply move along the trajectory of "what comes next" but to gain an experience you will treasure along the way. I have always felt that it is important to prize each step along your life's path, and never treat years of your limited lifespan simply as a tool to get from point A to point B.
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AuthorAmanda Kedaigle's work in the Broad Institute focuses on leveraging brand new biological data modalities to study novel models of human brain development. Archives
February 2022
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